Tag: Benjamin Wachs

Photo by Charlotte S. H. Jensen. Those lucky enough to have jobs are spending more and more time at them—so it matters more than ever to our mental health and psychological well-being what makes people happy on the job. A recent poll asked Americans what it is that makes them happy at work, and the… Read more »

If there is an “original sin” to intellectual culture of the last 500 years, it is the Big Data fallacy—the idea that if we can just gather up enough raw data, we can finally understand everything we need to know about the world. Is someone not happy? All you have to do is develop a… Read more »

The legendary movie about the conflict between rote learning and passionate engagement with the humanities at a boys prep school in the 1950s recently celebrated its 20th anniversary—and came in for a resounding barrage of criticism. Kevin Dettmar, an English professor at Pomona College, penned a piece for The Atlantic entitled “Dead Poets Society Is… Read more »

A conversation with a fellow writer turned into miniature a culture war last month when I mentioned that I didn’t believe that the human mind can be reduced to purely biochemical processes – that we are in fact more than a highly complicated biological machine. “Really?” my friend said. He was baffled. “I’ve never met… Read more »

Are we addicted to evil? That’s the provocative question asked by Stephen Metcalf in an article for Slate.com. By piecing together the etymology of the work “amok” (as in, “he ran amok”), examining the scripted quality of media coverage of spree violence like the shootings in Aurora, and looking at the difference between the Batman… Read more »

Photo by Jo Fjompenissedalheibakke If you get depressed when you turn on the radio, it could be the news – or it could be the music. According to new research, pop music has gotten significantly sadder over the last half-century. That’s measured in terms of tempo (it’s gotten slower), key (minor keys have come to predominate),… Read more »

The way we think about death impacts the way we live our life. “It seems,” write Daniel B. Pitchford and Rochelle Suri, “that people live inauthentic lives because the fear of death has a compelling grip on people and most choose to avoid engaging its impact.” It doesn’t have to be that way. In a… Read more »

There are a lot of hypotheticals around the question: “if we are lonelier, is our technology to blame?” A recent article in The Atlantic says “yes” and “yes,” with the title alone being a giveaway: “Is Facebook Making us Lonely?” Writing in Slate, Eric Klinenberg (author of “Going Solo”) says “no” and “no.” We’re not… Read more »

Did you know we’re running out of neurotics? According to an essay in the New York Times, “one modern American type is slipping into the past without a rattle or even its familiar whimper – the neurotic.” The problem, though, isn’t that there are too few neurotics in the 21st century: it’s that there are… Read more »

Is constant immersion in digital technology changing kids’ brains for better or for worse? A recent Pew poll of experts that is now getting a lot of media attention determined that: 55% of people polled thing it’s for the better, and 43% think it’s for worse. Well, gee, that was helpful. The inconclusive results aside,… Read more »